The Chemickal Marriage

‘The young woman –’

‘Misplaced her trust. She came here for help and found incompetence.’

Nicholas did not reply. Chang knew as well as anyone the degree to which the barman’s position rested on his ability to keep secrets, to take no favourites – that the existence of the Raton Marine depended on its being neutral ground.

Chang leant closer and spoke low. ‘If Jack Pfaff is dead, his secrets do not matter, but if he is alive, keeping his secrets will quite certainly kill him. He told you – I know he told you, Nicholas – not because he asked you to keep his trust, but because he wanted to brag, like an arrogant whelp.’

‘You underrate him.’

‘He can correct me any time he likes.’

Nicholas met Chang’s hard gaze, then reached under the bar and came up with a clear, shining disc the size of a gold piece. The glass had been stamped like a coin with an improbably young portrait of the Queen. On its other side was an elegant scrolling script: ‘Sullivar Glassworks, 87 Bankside’. Chang slid it back to the barman.

‘How many lives is that, Cardinal?’ drawled a voice from the balcony above him. ‘Or are you a corpse already?’

Chang ignored the spreading laughter and stepped into the street.

He broke into a jog, hurrying past the ships and the milling dockmen to a wide wooden rampway lined with artisans’ stalls. It sloped to the shingle and continued for a quarter of a mile before rising again. Once or twice a year the Bankside would be flooded by tides, but so precious was the land – able to deal directly with the water traffic (and without, it was understood, strict attention to such notions as tariffs) – that no one ever thought to relocate. Remade again and again, Bankside establishments were a weave of wooden shacks, as closely packed as swinging hammocks on the gun deck of a frigate.

The high gate – as a body Bankside merchants secured their borders against thievery – was not yet closed for the night. Chang nodded to the gatekeepers and strolled past. Number 87 was locked. Chang pressed his face to a gap near the gatepost – inside lay an open sandy yard, piled with barrels and bricks and sand. The windows of the shack beyond were dark.

His appearance alone would have caught the attention of the men at the gate, and Chang expected that they were watching him closely. He knew his key would not fit the lock. In a sudden movement Chang braced one foot on the lock and vaulted his body to the top of the fence and then over it. He landed in a crouch and bolted for the door – the guards at the gate would already be running.

The door was locked, but two kicks sheared it wide. Chang swore at the darkness and pulled off his glasses: a smithy – anvils and hammers, a trough and iron tongs – but no occupant. The next room had been fitted with a skylight to ventilate the heat and stink of molten glass. Long bars of hard, raw glass had been piled across a workbench, ready to be moulded into shape. The furnace bricks were cold.

No sign yet of the guards. Past the furnace was another open yard, chairs and a table cluttered with bottles and cups. In the mud beneath lay a scattering of half-smoked cigarettes, like the shell casings knocked from a revolver. The cigarette butts had been crimped by a holder. Behind another chair lay a ball of waxed paper. Chang pulled it apart to reveal a greasy stain in the centre. He put it to his nose and touched the paper with his tongue. Marzipan.

Across the yard lurked a larger kiln. Inside lay a cracked clay tablet: a mould, the indented shapes now empty, used with extreme heat to temper glass or metal. Each indentation had been for a different-shaped key.

From the front came voices and the rattling of the gate. To either side of the kiln stood a fence separating the glassworks from its neighbours. From the right came the scuttle of poultry. Chang picked up a brick and heaved it over. The crash sparked an cacophony of squawking. He then vaulted the opposite fence, away from his diversion, landing on a pile of grain sacks. At once he continued to the next fence, vaulting it and then three more in turn, meeting only one dog – a speckled hound as surprised by Chang’s arrival as he by it – and no human bold enough to interfere. The final leap set him on a stack of wooden crates stuffed with straw. Whether they held exotic fruit, blocks of ice or Dresden figurines, he never knew. He straightened his spectacles and walked without hurry past a family sitting to supper, out the front, and away from the curious crowd converging on the disturbance four doors down.

He did not doubt Pfaff had been there. Was that why it had been abandoned? The crimped cigarettes conjured up the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza. Was the marzipan a treat to buy Francesca Trapping’s good behaviour? Chang was late to meet the others, but even if he’d two more hours to search it hardly mattered – the trail was dead.

He hurried north, slowed by streets crowded not only with the disaffected but also with all sorts of respectable men and women, wreathed in the grim determination of travellers at a railway station. Chang pushed on with an unpleasant foreboding. The crowd’s destination was his own.

When he finally reached St Isobel’s, Chang had to crane his head to see the saint’s statue. Screeching street children dashed across his path, as high-spirited as feral dogs. The crowd around him recoiled – first from the children and then more earnestly from the black coach cracking forward in their wake. The driver lashed his team, threatening the whip to anyone in his way. The coach windows were drawn, but, as it swept by, a curtain’s twitch gave a glimpse of the white-powdered wig of a servant. Once the coach was past and the whip out of range, resentment swelled into curses hurled at the driver’s receding head. Chang wormed towards the statue, his patience frayed by the press of bodies.

He realized that he was squinting, despite the hour, and looked up. The sky was aglow with torchlight from the rooftops of the Ministries lining the far side of the square. Was there an occasion he had forgotten? A gala for the Queen? The birthday of some inbred relation – perhaps the exact idiot inside the black coach?

‘Cardinal Chang!’

Phelps waved his arms above the crush. Cunsher and Svenson stood near with Miss Temple dwarfed between them.

‘At last!’ called Phelps. ‘We had despaired of finding you!’

Chang pushed himself through to meet them. ‘What in hell is happening?’

‘An announcement from the Palace,’ Svenson replied. ‘Did you not hear?’

Before Chang could reply that if he had heard he would not have asked, Miss Temple touched Chang’s arm.

‘It is Robert Vandaariff!’ she said excitedly. ‘He has emerged, and will call on the Queen and Privy Council! Everyone looks to him for rescue! Have you ever seen such a gathering?’

‘We have waitied for you,’ Phelps yelled above the noise, ‘ but our thought is to move closer and observe.’

‘Perhaps even brave a rear entrance to the Ministries,’ added Svenson.

Chang nodded. ‘If he meets the Queen, there will be a regiment around them – but, yes, let us try.’

They edged around the great statue, the martyr scoldingly content in her sacrifice. Chang tugged Svenson’s sleeve and gestured to Miss Temple, who had taken the Doctor’s other hand. Svenson nodded. ‘The fabric was gone, and all purchased by a single customer.’

‘Who?’

‘Not who so much as where.’ Svenson pointed to the row of tall white buildings. ‘Sent to the Palace.’

‘The Queen?’

‘Or someone well placed at court.’

‘That could be one of five hundred souls.’

‘Still, it fits with where we thought the Contessa might be hiding.’

Chang glanced at Miss Temple. ‘You were right after all, Celeste.’

‘I was indeed.’

It was not a remark Chang had any desire to answer, so he called to Cunsher. ‘Did Pfaff leave word at the Boniface?’

Cunsher shook his head.

‘The Contessa?’

Cunsher shook his head again.